“I DO NOT ENTERTAIN INTERFERENCE IN MY PERSONAL OR PROFESSIONAL LIFE BY ANYONE”





Showbiz is not always sugar and spice and all things nice. It is not always easy to be the centre of attention, especially when you are trying hard to entrench yourself in an industry eclipsed with notoriety, backbiting and animosity. Life for a single girl was never easy in tinseltown and VJ, actor and model Pooja Missra experienced it in a manner which is rather startling.

Pooja has finally reached a saturation point and cannot keep silent. Finally, she is naming everyone who has made an attempt to ruin her career and dent her progress. She is visibly agitated as I meet her at a coffee shop. Anguish and revulsion drops out of every word she utters. In the middle of the conversation, her pitch suddenly goes up and she gets furious while recalling some of the sordid instances.

The allegations she is making against Timmy Narang and Eeshaa Koppikar are of serious proportions. The whole account is nothing short of bestselling pulp fiction. “It all started in the year 2006. I was staying at a guest house in Kalanagar (Mumbai). Back then, I used to go to Sykz gym at Pali naka in Bandra and these guys (the Narangs) stay at Pali Hill.


 I met them briefly in the year 1999 through some common friends. We hung out together four to five times and then I lost touch with them. I was not interested in any sort of friendship with them. They tried to approach me through common friends and also directly but I ignored them.”

Meanwhile, Pooja continues with her sordid saga. “On August 21, 2006, a magazine had approached me to host their three-day exhibition from August 16 to 19th for the mega wedding extravaganza they were organizing at the World Trade Centre. They wanted me to host their 12 workshops spanning over three days. In the deal they had promised me a cover in a prominent newspaper and also a wedding special magazine cover and they told me that I’ll be the face of the magazine.

 I incurred a lot of personal expenses to perfect the script down to the T. I was staying at Lokhandwala that time and I would leave every morning by seven and leave the place by 11 in the night. I did my bit. What did I get in return? When the newspaper cover came out, there was Eeshaa Koppikhar on it,” she fumes.

She continues, “It was Timmy, Jimmy and Ramona’s work. I had got an offer from JCB, a corporate brand of heavy vehicles, in Egypt on the river Nile. There I met Omar Sharif and his family and they were really impressed and wanted me to come back and shoot. But their agent never got back to me. The repeat performance was again given to someone else. Then after one or two months, I saw Malaika Arora doing the same show. Who was behind this game plan? Naturally, the Narangs. I filed police complaints against them but they refused to take any action. Then they realized that they should break down my support system in the city.”

Pooja’s allegations don’t end here. She was a part of Big Switch, a reality show from Endemol and Bindaas. “Eeshaa influenced Endemol to ensure that I did not win the show Big Switch. They saw my strength. In the show we were put in extremely unhygienic conditions and it was a strenuous task. After the show, I had to take a tetanus injection. I had a muscle tear and there were blue marks all over my body. I came first among all the girls.”

Pooja claims she has filed for harassment, intrusion of privacy, manipulation, defamation and plagiarism. “I do not entertain interference in my personal or professional life by anyone and if there is any, it will be liable to the court of law. I am nobody’s niece, daughter or sister when I am working. I am tough as nails. I already have a boyfriend who adores me and is monogamous.

When the hoardings of my limited edition calendar had gone up all over city, they were unceremoniously pulled down without even any intimation to me. That is wrong. I have got my fundamentals right and you just can’t do it. I went to the joint municipal commissioner RA Rajeev. He showed me the authorization letter by the then Mayor Shubha Raul to remove the posters.

Apparently, it was again done by Eeshaa and her well-wishers. When I told Rajeev how hard I had worked on the calendar, he told me to get another layout made. I did that and the hoardings were up again all over Mumbai,” she ends, still fuming at the injustice meted out to her.

* Courtesy: Showtime